Holland coach Frank De Boer admits his side need to eradicate the errors from their game if they are to do well on their return to a major tournament after a seven-year absence.
Holland, who failed to qualify for Euro 2016 or World Cup 2018, were 2-0 up at home to Ukraine with 15 minutes to go thanks to goals from Georginio Wijnaldum and Wout Weghorst when they conceded twice in four minutes to Andriy Yarmolenko and Roman Yaremchuk.
However, they were rescued by PSV defender Denzel Dumfries, who redeemed himself after wasting Holland’s best chance before they scored, by heading home his first international goal at the far post.
🥳 What a moment for Denzel Dumfries!— UEFA EURO 2020 (@EURO2020) June 13, 2021
“When you concede two goals that is not what you want to see but we played dominantly and that is what we want to see,” De Boer told his post-match press conference.
“You have to defend Yarmolenko better and we did not do that. It was a great goal but it was not necessary. The second goal was from a free-kick and you have to stop it.
“We have to learn from these mistakes. You cannot play 90 minutes without making an error – this is not realistic – but these things we will have to be analysed to see what we we need to improve.
“We can be proud, hopefully we can make more steps.”
GOOD TEAM PERFORMANCE! 💪🏾So happy to score my first goal with @onsoranje! 🇳🇱🔥 #EURO2020pic.twitter.com/f8IwkUzCpC— Denzel Dumfries (@DenzelJMD2) June 13, 2021
De Boer also spoke about the emotion in the camp following the collapse of Denmark’s former Ajax forward Christian Eriksen on Saturday.
“I saw those images and I had to leave the room. I had five years with Christian,” he added.
“It was a roller-coaster last night. We had a meeting but we rescheduled it for the morning as we didn’t want to talk about football.
“Daley (Blind) was quite emotional. He had some problems with his own heart and one of his best friends is Christian Eriksen so it is normal there are a lot of emotions going through us, him especially.”
Ukraine coach Andriy Shevchenko could not hide his disappointment after seeing his side throw away a point.
“I think it was a very interesting game with lots of opportunities for both sides,” he said.
“I’d like to thank my team for the reaction they showed, especially after we were 2-0 down and had lost the game at that point.”
Yarmolenko remained optimistic about their chances of progressing from Group C.
He said: “It is always upsetting to lose games like this at the end but it is not a tragedy. We still have two games to go.”
